The blaze is believed to have started at around 7:30 a.m. in the back of a first-floor shop at East Fordham Road and Valentine Avenue.

With thick clouds of gray smoke still billowing from the shop hours after it began, the flames destroyed boxed piles of stock.

Bronx Borough Commander James Esposito said his firefighters tried to fight the fire inside the building at first, but the decision was later made to fight it from the outside.

“The fire was rolling overhead on the first floor,” Esposito said.

“We tried to put it out with interior hand lines, but the fire was too great, and we had to pull back.” The cause of the blaze, that left three firefighters with minor injuries, is under investigatation.